Oracle Big Data Appliance offers a comprehensive platform integrating ZFS technology and supporting Spark, designed to boost performance with Hadoop distributions, ensuring data security and accessibility across multiple languages.
| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| Oracle Big Data Appliance | 2.5% |
| Snowflake | 9.3% |
| Teradata | 8.7% |
| Other | 79.5% |
Oracle Big Data Appliance presents an adaptable solution facilitating data consolidation with robust storage technology, crucial for central data repositories. Its Spark in-memory processing significantly reduces time through seamless integration with Hadoop distributions like Hortonworks and Cloudera. Role-based security enhances organizational data access, while multi-language support meets diverse processing requirements. Although challenges exist in AI capabilities and visualization tool efficiency, the platform remains valuable for entity-wide deployment.
What key features does Oracle Big Data Appliance offer?Oracle Big Data Appliance is predominantly used in healthcare and financial services, where data consolidation and regulatory compliance are crucial. Entities leverage Oracle's storage capabilities to maintain centralized repositories, expediting regulatory reporting and claim management processes, particularly benefiting sectors like Medicare. Consulting services frequently integrate Oracle platforms to enhance data management efficiency, especially for organizations utilizing Oracle applications.
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| Author info | Rating | Review Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Analytics Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees | 4.0 | I've used Oracle Big Data Appliance for 15 years; it's stable, scalable, and offers strong storage features, but it's pricey, complex to set up, and the visualization tools need improvement despite solid support and reliable performance. |
| AI & Data Engineering Lead at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees | 4.0 | I find Big Data Appliance excellent for a single source of truth and real-time insights. However, I believe it needs more Oracle AI/ML innovation rather than relying on Cloudera, and its cost is high. |
| Associate Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees | 4.0 | As a consultant, I find this comprehensive, easy-to-deploy solution stable and scalable. Spark memory processing significantly improved our times for regulatory work. I rate it 8/10, but it needs simplification for average users. |
| Systems Analyst at a tech services company with 51-200 employees | 4.0 | I rate Oracle OBI EE an 8/10. I value how end-users easily build reports without database knowledge and automatic security. However, repository deployment is harder in 12c, and I'd like easier dashboard embedding options. |
| IT Coordinator at Fundo Nacional de Saude | 4.5 | I find this product very stable, reliable, and easy for end-users, even without training. Our long-term Oracle partnership ensures good support and efficient, useful results. My main need is to display results on our website. |
| Senior Program Manager at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees | 3.5 | I appreciate its secure multi-language processing, Spark integration, and Hadoop support for sentiment analysis. While deployment and scalability were fine, initial stability required tuning. I suggest improving data visualization, and customer service was decent. |
The typical use case for Oracle Big Data Appliance, which my clients use, is usually that the customer who has an Oracle application uses it because they can leverage the storage part.
I don't need to ship my data from the Oracle database application into another data warehouse or big data solution. I have everything in one place. All the clients that I dealt with are Oracle houses.
The best feature of Oracle Big Data Appliance, from a price perspective for the storage, is because they have technology called the ZFS technology. It offers huge storage with a decent price. With Oracle, you can find the SMEs easily. I don't need to look forever to find an SME. It is a mature technology.
I have employed the Oracle Big Data SQL feature. Regarding this feature, I think it is good. The beneficial aspect about this feature is I can have different users from different levels at my organization use it to inquire about any transaction or any information.
Areas of Oracle Big Data Appliance that can be improved include the pricing perspective because nowadays they have competition. We have so many technologies that have come to the market for less than even one-fourth or one-fifth of the Oracle price. For my side, the last time I worked with Oracle was in '21, '22. The price is a challenge that they have to look after.
From the storage and data management perspective, I cannot recall anything that they have to improve, but they have to improve the visualization part significantly because they offer Oracle BI, which is an extremely not-matured application.
I have been using Oracle Big Data Appliance for the last 15 years.
Regarding the stability of Oracle Big Data Appliance, I can say it is stable.
From my side, I haven't faced any challenge regarding the scalability and security of this solution.
On a scale from one to 10, I give them nine for technical support. They are doing good.
Positive
The initial setup of Oracle Big Data Appliance is somewhat complex. Nothing is easy with Oracle. It requires an SME. The user experience with Oracle is not that matured. It's acceptable since usually from a technical perspective, we look after the maturity and security. Having the features is more important than looking after the experience. To set up the environment is not easy. I need to have an expert to set up my environment.
I have seen a return on investment from Oracle Big Data Appliance. Adding the new add-ons, features, and coming with different main versions, they invested a lot. The challenge is from a price perspective because every add-on, the SQL feature, the real end, comes with a license mechanism. If I have a big organization, the cost is magnificent, which is a challenge for the partner to sell and to convince the client.
I use Big Data Appliance to have a single source of truth for my data and to keep all my data in one place.
Because Big Data Appliance allows me to have a single source of truth, it means I have clean data that can be monetized and leveraged to gain more insights with real-time reports from the dashboard.
From a technical perspective, Big Data Appliance could be improved with more innovation in the AI and machine-learning parts instead of relying on Cloudera. Oracle could also improve Big Data Appliance by having one technology on their stack and working on it instead of continually changing the name or technologies or features. In addition, they could have a program to enable their partners to use this technology because right now, I have to have an expert to use the AI elements.
Big Data Application is a stable product.
Big Data Application has no problems with scalability.
Oracle's prices are too high compared to others in the market.
I would rate Big Data Appliance as eight out of ten.
I am a consultant and I provide services that include this solution.
One of my customer's use cases was regulatory work, specifically with a Medicare application. The solution was designed for regulatory reporting and claim management.
The most valuable feature is that it can be used in conjunction with Spark memory processing. We are migrating from a mainframe and the Spark in-memory processing time is good. Our processing time has gone to 20 minutes from what used to be two or three hours on the mainframe.
This is a comprehensive solution that is easy to deploy.
The product should be simplified for the average user.
I have been working with different firms using the Oracle Big Data Appliance for more than three years.
We have not had any issues with stability.
Scalability has not been a problem for us.
We have not been in contact with technical support.
I have worked with similar solutions and the main difference between them is the analytics.
This solution is very easy to deploy.
We have an in-house team for deployment and maintenance.
The features that I have needed to this point have all been available and this is a product that I recommend.
I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.
We use Oracle OBI EE to allow end-users in our organization to build reports from our databases based on their needs and roles.
The best thing about the product is that the end-user can build the reports by themselves without really knowing anything about databases. There is a Subject Area that is populated by the administrator. The end-user — without knowing anything at all about the structure of the databases — can use these Subject Area resource lists to build reports that they would like to see. It is all assembled with a drag-and-drop interface. The administrators apply the relevant security roles for the Subject Area content and the users. Every end-user can access the Subject Area to access data they are permitted to access and build a report. The roles from the security setup are automatically applied in access to Subject Area components and in the output of the report.
I think that is a great feature because we, as administrators, just have to define the relevant security in the Subject Area and for every report that is viewed, the relevant security is already applied. Users do not have access to things outside of their privileges.
While I have not worked with version 12c extensively — because I am working with 11g in production currently — it is a little more difficult to deploy the repository in 12c. The process has changed from the way it was in 11g. Our deployment for 12c is currently testing only.
I think it would be good if Oracle could supply a solution to embed dashboards in applications. These need to be easy solutions for embedding to dashboards or the environment for making reports. Embedding directly into applications would help end-users a lot.
We have been using the solution for two years.
I have not had any difficulties with the stability of OBI EE.
I did not work with the cubes on Oracle BIEE. I worked with the aggregate tables and I have not yet used cubes with Essbase (extended spreadsheet database). I think for a larger data set that we should be using Essbase, but I have not yet tested it or used it before. It seems that it would be more scalable in accessing and using more data.
I have not contacted Oracle for technical support because I have not had any major problems that required it. We do have minor issues sometimes, but I have been able to solve problems by doing searches on the internet. There is one website that I use when I need to find answers that has very good articles and it is a good resource for learning and solving issues. I keep it in my shortcuts for when I need it. But Oracle is a popular product with a large user base and I can find good articles in various places through searching and that has helped me a lot.
Our deployment time with 11g was short because it was easy to do. I didn't have any difficulties with it. With 12c, I only have a little bit of experience with it in a testing environment. I think it will take longer to deploy in production than 11g.
On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Oracle OBI EE as an eight out of ten.
It's easy for end users to use. You don't need to be so technical to use it and produce something using the product.
The speed, provides more accurate information about your business, and the relationship with the manufacturer is good.
We need to display the results on our website. I think there is another product that joins with it to give you the possibility. I'm not sure about that.
It's very stable. You need to have some infrastructure to support this stability, but it is stable. It's reliable. It's faster.
Scalability has been okay.
I haven't used technical support. I'm an end user. The company provides it through Oracle the support. I think it's good. We have no interruptions in the service, and response time is very good.
The guys from Oracle showed us the capabilities of the product, based it on our needs. We gave all the data, information, and said what we need, what we intend to have, what we are expecting as a result, and they produced a PoC.
We started with Oracle. Now every time Oracle adds new features, new products, they bring them to us, they present the products and we try to choose one, when there is a need on our part for that particular solution. Now we have almost the whole suite.
The most important criteria when you're choosing a vendor like Oracle are trust, speed of the solution, results. We've been using Oracle almost 20 years, since 2000, so you have a kind of partnership. You continue with the new release, new products, and new technologies.
Big Data responds to my needs. I can find a very good solution, very easy to implement, all my technical people, even having no training, are able to handle the tool and start to produce something useful.
Look for efficiency in the solution.
It supports the two most widely-used Hadoop distributions: Hortonworks Data Platform and Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop. It also uses Spark on YARN, making data processing faster and more stable.
Access to individual data sets and projects can be restricted for specific users and user groups, allowing Oracle Big Data Discovery 1.1 to be rolled out to large groups of analysts securely.
Language processing capabilities are expanded to support more than 80 languages.
The capability to process so many languages has been our biggest improvement. We were working on customer sentiment analysis for a large media company which has recently taken over a large studio in Hollywood (anonymous for confidentiality reasons). We could work on large unstructured datasets from different parts of the world on Facebook and Twitter to get better insights.
They need to work on the visualization of data. That would be a nice, useful improvement.
I've been using it since March 2016.
We had no issues with the deployment.
We had to pursue several performance tuning measures to bring up the system to scale. Oracle ACS supported us in stabilizing the system.
We have had no issues scaling it for our needs.
In my experience, I'd rate customer service a 6 out of 10.
Technical Support:In my experience, I'd rate technical support a 6 out of 10.
Oracle provides organized documentation on initial setup. We engaged Oracle Advanced Customer Support (ACS) along with our infrastructure team. We utilized our Oracle Big Data Appliance (BDA) server.
We implemented it with our in-house team. It is very important to begin with an objective approach around the use cases. For instance, it took us around two months to arrive at a consensus on the kind of entertainment program that will attract more viewership towards our client’s upcoming movie channel. Our client was focused on only sports in the beginning.
We were also looking at QlikView, but it is not fit for scale, hence we switched to Oracle Big Data Appliance.
